


if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind

by Transformatron



Series: Beauyasha Fic [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Denial, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Team as Family, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Yasha is A MessTM, warning: Obann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27959069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transformatron/pseuds/Transformatron
Summary: It’s over.Obann is dead (for real, this time).And Yasha is absolutely, one hundred percent okay.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, The Mighty Nein & Yasha
Series: Beauyasha Fic [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061897
Comments: 48
Kudos: 208





	if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind

**Author's Note:**

> Title lyrics from 'I Found' by Amber Run, from Yasha Playlist II. 
> 
> I hit episode 69 and I have too many emotions to process. Inspirational shout-out to 'run away' by mnemememory and 'once i was here, once I was somebody's friend' by civilorange. Please check out those fics if you haven't already. 
> 
> Fair warning: this isn't canon compliant. I wrote this around... episode 80??? When I thought the Nein would go back to the Xhorhouse immediately after their talk with King Dwendol. So there are some discrepancies, but hopefully, folks can still follow along. It's mostly about that Sad Yasha Angst and the Nein's attempts at comfort, anyway.

Jester’s arms lock around you in the ruins of the cathedral, the shattered stained-glass window bleeding colour through your tears. She shakes as much as you do. 

“It’s over,” she whispers. “You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

Like she’s trying to convince herself. Like she needs to be sure.

You put the Nein through an abyss-worth of hell. You hurt them and hacked them apart and laughed at their screams. The least you can do is be whole again in the aftermath. Be strong. So Jester – who never gave up on you, whose whispered messages kept you sane as Exandria cleaved open around your blade – doesn’t have to worry.

You clutch her just as tight. Muttering against the curve of her horn, a prayer, a creed: “I’m okay, I’m okay. I promise.”

What a shame, Orphan Maker.

You never were any good at lying.

* * *

“What do you want?”

You blink back from bloody halls. The seven of you fill the main living space of your mansion in Xhorhas – the Xhorhouse, as Jester insists on calling it. You sit on a birch chair too spindly to hold you for extended periods. Caleb leans on the counter across from you, watching.

Everyone watches you, now.

“Well?” Caleb asks, quieter. “Anything?”

It’s your second day in control of this body. You keep waiting for _him_ to move your eyelids for you. Forgetting, sometimes, how to blink.

That morning, when you forced those eyelids open, you found a pot of herbal tea steaming on your bedside table. Owls hooted outside. No storms on the horizon, just endless starry skies. A new day, the world seemed to promise. A fresh start. You’d slept like the dead, dreamless and deep, and awoke feeling more alive than you had done in months.

You would’ve preferred nightmares.

Caleb frowns. He tucks a hand into his rumpled coat, where he keeps his spellcasting supplies. Molasses, saltpetre, ash. “Yasha?”

So cautious, as he peers into your eyes. Afraid of who might look back.

“It’s a simple question,” says Nott. She stirs whatever concoction she’s compiling on the table. A bubble pops with a _boof_ of noxious purple gas. “We’re going to the market, and if you want to eat something other than boba for the next fortnight, now’s the time to speak.”

You want to laugh. You want to cry. You haven’t made a decision for yourself in over four months, and how are you supposed to answer something as momentous as _what do you want_ with ‘roast rat and a meat pie, please’?

Their gazes erode you. Fjord and Nott, mistrustful. Jester, so sympathetic it’s stifling. Caduceus, sipping calmly at his tea. Beau alone doesn’t look your way. She glares at her book, though she hasn’t turned a page since Jester first dragged you in, pushed out a chair and demanded (smile too big, too fragile) that you sit.

“Nothing,” you say, after far too long. The words clog your throat like you’ve punctured a lung, filling your airways with blood. You close your eyes when they start to sting, then open them. There. Blinking. Easy. “I – I – I want nothing.”

Caleb nods. His hand drops from his coat and he turns away. He understands, you think, more than anyone. More than you want him to.

Jester reaches over the table. She squeezes your fingers. How pathetic. You’ve betrayed her all over again by not being better. By not being _fixed._ By reverting to this mute, stumbling mess, more useless than when Molly first found you (Molly, _Molly;_ Gods, don’t think of him). Unable to string a sentence or touch your own sword.

You’ll do better, you promise yourself, as Jester pats your curled fist. For her. For them. You have to.

Caleb scratches a note at the end of his shopping list. He turns to the door, calling for Fjord and Caduceus to join him. You expect his usual shadow to wind between his ankles. Instead, there’s a soft _mrrow_ from your left. Next moment, you find yourself with a lapful of ginger cat.

Your held breath stales inside you. You release it little by little, as Frumpkin kneads your thighs and _mrrows_ again, loud enough to startle Beau from her pretence at reading.

You duck away as she glances over. Burying your fingers in soft red fur.

Frumpkin rubs his cheek on yours. He purrs, and purrs, and purrs. Maybe, you think, just maybe, _okay_ isn’t so far out of reach.

* * *

You’re wrong.

You ought to be used to that, by now.

* * *

Caleb buys you a horsemeat pie. It’s hot and peppery, soaked in rich, thick gravy. You thank him and try to enjoy it, though red hands shackle your wrists and collar your throat.

It’s a struggle to swallow. When you manage, all you taste is iron.

* * *

Your name is Yasha Nydoorin and you let your first family die.

Your name is Yasha Nydoorin and you tried to brutally slaughter your second one.

Your name is Yasha Nydoorin, and you’re scared of the back of your own neck.

Your name is Orphan Maker and you are mine, mine, mine –

* * *

You venture into Rosohna the next day. You’re grateful the Nein have chosen a dull evening, when the streets are almost clear. Still, you twitch from everyone you pass, expecting them to point and scream. Nobody does.

Fjord leads the way. Three of the Nein accompany him, you included. There’s Nott, who glares from the corner of one eye, hand on her crossbow. And Beau, sauntering ahead of you, hands wedged in deep her pockets, shoulders slouched. When she glances at reflections in the darkened shop windows, her gaze darts everywhere but you. You’re a black hole cut from her world.

It’s okay. You struggle to focus on her, too. Especially the ugly rift dividing her abdomen.

You tried so desperately to heal it, like fixing her would fix everything. But you couldn’t even wipe away one scar.

You hang back as Nott and Beau enter their destination: an apothecary shop, whose stock should replenish the Nein's potions. Fjord lingers, glancing over one too-tense shoulder.

“C’mon, Yasha,” he calls. “Keep up.”

Your feet obey, unthinking. You hate them for it, but don’t stop walking.

The first time _he_ stroked your face, lightning snapped his fingers. So he spat. Snarled. Tightened his grip on the back of your neck, until there was nothing left to resist.

_You’re my favourite, Orphan Maker. My love –_

“That’s close enough,” says Fjord.

You freeze. You didn’t mean to encroach on his personal space. But there he is, not a metre from you. Sunk into a ready stance, yellow eyes cold as the Eldritch energy engulfing one broad green hand.

Whatever he sees in your eyes, it makes him dispel it. Grudgingly.

“Breathe,” he mutters.

You follow that command too. Though you’re not sure he really wants you to. Though you’re not sure if you should.

* * *

Bloodstains creep up your arms like satin gloves. Slickly beautiful when wet, drying to itchy copper-brown. Angel of the Irons, your hands thick with rust.

You’re not allowed to wash them, unless he gives the order.

You’re not allowed to scrape the crust from under your nails.

You’re not allowed to move, to beg, to _scream –_

* * *

One night, you lurch from that thick, empty sleep, long before the feeble Xhorhasian dawn. It’s the sleep of the non-existent, you think. Or of those who want to be. Even your subconscious is cowardly, fleeing your sins. Your body crackles, electrified. You’re rawly and painfully awake, though the sky past your balcony is blacker than when your God calls.

He’s been quiet, since that triumphal thunderclap when you were freed. How disappointed he must’ve been, watching you sag against your shackles, submit.

Not nearly as disappointed as your friends, or yourself. If the Stormlord hates you, he can get in line.

Your feet carry you to the kitchen. You stand on the threshold, half in and half out of the space, unbelonging. Then you walk to the chopping rack and draw a knife.

You need to know, that’s all. It’s not self-punishment (because you are okay, because you promised Jester). But you must be sure he is gone.

_I didn’t say you could eat, Orphan Maker._

_I didn’t say you could look at the monk, wonder why she doesn’t look back, after you slaughtered so many of her kind._

_I didn’t say you could die._

That voice is just a bad memory. You know it; you know it. If only that stopped him talking.

Blue veins braid your wrist. You’ve always been pale as marble. If he’s really there, you’ll be as unbreakable, too.

He doesn’t want you hurt. You’re his favourite, after all.

But- _oh._ There. The knife slips in, smooth as silk. You sigh at the sting, the welling red. Your rust gloves reform. Better when it’s your own blood. Better than anyone else’s.

An experiment should cease once you’ve ascertained a result. That result is dripping down your fingers: he’s gone, he’s dead, he can no longer torment you. But the pain is bright as fireworks and before you realize it, you’ve shoved the knife _in,_ scraping bone, severing tendons, fingers falling limp as dead things, blood splattering the tiles –

“Yasha?”

You heal yourself quickly. Not quickly enough.

Caduceus lopes over while you quiver. You face away from him, face wet as your wrist.

There’s no shocked hiss when he sees what you’ve done, no rebuke. Caduceus just eases the knife from your slack grip. He deposits it in the sink with a faint _clink_ that makes flinches ricochet up your spine. Then he wets a towel and – illuminated by the faint glow he’s cast on one of his bangles – kneels to mop the mess.

You’re frozen. Ashamed. You should reassure him that this isn’t what it looks like. Caduceus doesn’t have to worry about you. None of them do. You just needed to _know._

You can’t force out the words.

Caduceus hums while he works. He wrings the cloth and rinses your blood off the knife. Then stands, unfolding to his full, ceiling-scraping height.

You await his judgement. Eyes downcast. What honeyed words can he stir into this? What can he say, to make everything better?

You want, suddenly, viciously, for him to try. Then he’ll fail, and he’ll see the thing he brought back from the cathedral isn’t what any of them wanted –

“You need a new hat,” says Caduceus. His voice rasps at the bass of his register, gravelled with sleep.

“What?”

His hand drops on your head. It’s heavy, warm. It smells of earth and sunshine. “A new hat. For working in the garden. I never finished the one I started weaving, when the Roc attacked.”

That seems so long ago, though it hasn’t been a year.

“I think I’d like that,” you whisper. Leaning, just a little, into his touch.

Caduceus steps closer, giving you time to pull away. You stay right where you are. When his arms close around you, your head comes up to his chest. It’s still a strange experience, to be able to hide your face there. His breath is bovine, grassy, a warm whuff down the collar of your sweat-steeped sleep shirt. He strokes your spine until you have to excuse yourself, stumbling back to bed before you fall.

* * *

You spend the next morning in the garden, tending to your patch. Caduceus weeded it while you were gone, but the crawler-vines are tenacious. They keep worming back, reaching up, stealing the false magelight from your flowers.

Your new hat rests low on your head, shading the back of your neck (that place you’re afraid to touch, much less lift your hair and study in the mirror). Caduceus must’ve started weaving hours ago, to have it ready on time.

You trip over a thousand words as he works beside you, still humming tunelessly under his breath. _This is kind_ and _you didn’t have to_ and _I’m not worth it._

None make it past your lips. The warmth of the enchanted sunlight stays with you, long after you go back inside.

* * *

Yet still, it fades. As all things must.

* * *

The bath in the basement is warm as a womb. You sink into it again and again, sometimes every morning as well as every night, before the house wakes. Sitting there, head tucked between your knees, surrounded by the gentle embrace of the water, you soak until your fingers are red and wrinkled as a newborn.

You don’t scrub yourself. If you start, you might not stop. There’s this temptation, you see, to chase the itch of old, dried blood. To gouge into all the places he touched you, cutting him out like a tumour.

When that urge tugs tight behind your navel, you tuck your hands into your armpits so you won’t scratch open your thighs and sink to the bottom, blowing out. Searching for solace in the weight of the water, the pound of your pulse against your eardrums.

How long do you stay down there? As long as you can. A little longer. Your lungs scream, vision a watery blur. You watch your hair swirl up above you, the white, pure tips so far away.

Before your eyes roll back, before you can take that first, welcome inhale, a hand plunges through the surface. It grasps a handful of waving seaweed-hair and _yanks._ Not strong enough to lift you. Just to jolt you back to life.

Your eyes snap open. Up you surge, sputtering, coughing. Hacking out sour, soapy water. It doesn’t taste nearly as sweet as it smells.

Nott backpedals, slipping and skidding on the stones. Glaring with huge yellow eyes.

Right. She sneaks down early too, to suffer through her minimal hygiene routine. It looks like she wants to say something as you stare blankly, rivulets painting your shoulders and cheeks. Her little hands clench and unclench. 

“Don’t make me do that again,” she says, eventually. “I don’t like water.”

You nod, heaving yourself out to sit on the side. Nott doesn’t approach, skirting along the wall, far from the radius of your reach. But she gives you a minute to gather the unravelling threads of your thoughts, before grumbling about bath-hogging barbarians and tossing you a towel.

* * *

You are a drowning animal. You thrash and you thrash, but the water’s glassy surface remains still. When he lets you up for snatches of air, all you can do is cry. Tears dilute the red on your cheeks until he forces you back down.

Oh, you fight him. You fight and you fight and you _fight,_ because it’s all you can do, all you’ve ever been good at. But you never gain any headway. Just grind against the egg of your skull: a runty, foetal thing, too weak to hatch.

Those days – when you battle his will and lose – are hard.

They’re infinitely better than the days you don’t fight at all.

* * *

Your vision swims back after the third beatdown. It brims with blue, Beau, blue.

She stands over you, arms crossed. You know what she sees. A broken colossus, on her back in the bloody sawdust. They’ve dragged you out the ring so the next pair can take their turn, the whooping crowd reforming around them.

So you assume, anyway. You remember nothing beyond the crack of your jaw, the fireflies that swarmed your vision.

_Finish it, champion._

You weren’t in Rexxentrum long enough to find a suitable underground establishment. Thankfully, Rosohna has a plentiful supply. You've found yourself here more nights than not, this week. Bare toes digging into the sand. Forcing down your Rage.

Bruises swell, bruises blacken. This is an exorcism, of sorts. The violence draws something rotten inside you up to the surface. Your whole being sings with pain, but the smile clinging to your cheeks is entirely your own.

Beau – beautiful, blue-eyed Beau – doesn’t return it.

“Is this helping?” she demands.

She doesn’t seem to know how to respond, when you nod _._ Still, she reaches down. Lifts you – swaying, head spinning – to your feet. She oofs at your weight, but doesn’t drop you. Beau’s always been strong. Stronger than anyone you know. The arm around your waist is tempered steel, not iron and rust.

You let yourself lean on her, as much as you need. Then, selfishly, a little more.

“I’m okay,” you try to tell her.

She just snorts.

Her silence aches far worse than the beating that preceded it as she helps you hobble up the stairs, taking them one throbbing, aching step at a time. She must’ve heard you sneak out, tailed you to this underground club. It seems she dislikes what she found.

 _Did you doubt?_ you want to ask. _When he branded me, made me his, did you think that was my true self? That I’d been lying to all of them – to you – from the start?_

You’re always so eloquent, inside your own head. What holds your tongue isn’t how you might stumble though this question, were you to speak it out loud. Only fear of her answer.

“I’m the one you stabbed,” Beau mutters, as you near the top. 

You dip your chin to your chest. You know, you know, you’ll never forget. 

“I’m the one you wronged.” A hand pets your hair: the matted fuzz, the plaits, the beaded locks. “So,” says Beau, voice rougher than her touch, “when you want punishment, you come to me.”

* * *

Sleep comes again, troublingly easy. Then, one night, it doesn’t.

You writhe over your bed, blood daubing your mind. Skingorger slices blue robes as easily as the knife parted your wrist. You want to run into the night, but the Stormlord hasn’t called you. No one wants you; there’s nowhere to go.

_Your name is Yasha Nydoorin and you are the coward who fled your wife’s execution._

_Your name is Yasha Nydoorin and you weren’t there to hold your best friend as he died._

_Your name is Yasha Nydoorin and you hurt your friends, and you’re still hurting them, and you don’t know how to stop._

_Your name is Orphan Maker and –_

You get up.

Shame keeps you from the kitchen. That and the fear you might find Caduceus at the table, between you and the knife rack, with an all-too-knowing smile and a steaming cup of tea.

You pace your room instead. Your new hat rests on your bedside table. Though the night air turns your arms to birdflesh, the woven straws still feel sun-warm to your touch. It helps, pulling the hat on and staring at your mural of flowers, though they’re rendered in black-and-white by your Dark Vision.

It does not help enough.

Another hour of dithering passes before you find yourself in front of her door, eyes scratchy for want of sleep. You left the hat on your pillow. The memory of sunlight has no place here.

You’ve been a stranger in your own body for so long that you no longer know its limits: where you end and the rest of the world begins. When you knock, your knuckles strike the wood several inches before you expect.

A thought: _you are larger than the thing he made you, when he crushed you down so tight at the bottom of your mind._

Another: _if he is gone, does that mean you’re crushing yourself?_

You’re not sure what to make of that. The door cracks open before you figure it out.

Beau stands before you, yawning. Her hair is mussed, free from its top-knot, and sleep grit crusts her lashes. You spy Jester passed out on the bunk behind her, facedown, burbling snores into the pillow.

Beau doesn’t look surprised to find you filling her doorway. Neither does she ask what you want. You’re glad: you have no reply. Blue eyes harden. She catches the next yawn in her fist, then shrugs her robe over her sleeping clothes and stalks past you for the stairs.

“Come on,” she says.

You follow her down, into the dark.

* * *

The reed-mat floors of the dojo extend under the cover of night, the room made cavernous with shadow. Beau works fast but patient, each action measured. She gathers a rope from the rack of weapons, tests a blade against her fingertip. Shakes her head, replaces it. The metal makes a faint _shrrrrr_ as it slides back into its sheathe.

You stand, swaying and unmoored, at the room’s centre. Pulse a buzz in your ears. The click of the lock makes you jump. As does that first, coveted touch: Beau’s palm, so firm and warm against your back.

“Ready?”

You want to be. So badly. You order yourself to stop shaking. Then, when that doesn’t work, lock up your limbs and tense. Every muscle burns like it might rip from under your skin.

“Yes,” you say. You strip your shirt in one swift motion, baring yourself to the night.

Beau’s gaze ticks over you. Her smirk is a cat’s curl, her gaze an open flame, licking where she knows you better than anyone living. “Limits?”

“None.”

“Yasha…”

“Please.” You hold her gaze, for the first time in too long. “ _Please._ Just – “

You don’t have the language for what you’re asking. Beau doesn’t make you search for it. Still, her brows crease as she loops the rope around your wrists. “Usual words?”

 _Frumpkin,_ slow. _Fluffernutter,_ stop _._ You nod, with no intention of using them.

Beau steps close enough to catch, to kill. You could snap her throat in three seconds flat. Your fingers twitch at the thought – but rough hemp rubs your pulsepoint, where you fed that knife. It grounds you. A reminder of who you are not. Not anymore.

You bow your head as Beau tosses the rope over one of the high ceiling hooks used to string up training dummies. She pulls the other end, using her entire body as leverage to hoist your arms above your head.

She can’t leave you dangling. That’s a shame; there’s something appealing about that image of yourself, strung up like meat on the drain. You push onto your toes instead, sighing long and low. Emptying yourself, like you’re sinking into another pool. Low, deep, as far beneath the surface as you can descend.

Beau tautens the rope, tying it off with one of Fjord’s sailing knots and tucking the trailing end. Moving just a little slow, like she’s psyching herself up. Or just giving you the chance to say no.

“I’m going to use this.” She shows you another length of cord. It’s sharper, whippier, a treated leather that’ll bite through your flesh. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Tell me you’re sure.”

You do so. Then you shut your eyes, and you smile.

* * *

It’s perfect.

The swish. The strike. Your involuntary jerk against your bonds. There’s a release in here, where you can give yourself over to her, just her. The ropes grate your wrists bloody. A reminder that you can’t strike back, can’t hurt her, ever again.

Even though you know you could.

Rage churns within you. It’s inescapable, as much a part of you as your bones, your teeth, your mismatched eyes. It would be so, _so_ easy. To snap these pathetic restraints and strangle her with them and paint the dojo red-red- _red –_

He never made you a monster. He just showed you what you _could_ be.

You shake your head. Like you can shake _him_ out of it. There’s a difference, you tell yourself, between being held down and letting yourself be tied.

Another lash. Another hissed moan.

Beau pads around to stand in front of you. Oh, she’s so beautiful. She makes your heart stick to the inside of your ribs. Lithe and dark, graceful as a hunting cat. She curls the bloody cord around her fist, resting it between your heaving breasts. Cupping your face with one calloused palm, she examines your slack expression, your sleepy eyes.

“Hey. Still with me?”

You want to be. Very much so. You rest against your upstretched arm, sandwiching her hand between your cheek and your sweat-damp shoulder. “More.”

“We’ve been going a while. Should probably call a break and start the clean up, before anyone wakes.”

Has time passed? You’ve been floating, detached from it all. Wilfully, this time. Letting yourself drift.

_Scared little Orphan Maker, always running away –_

“More.”

“Yasha…”

“Please.”

With Beau, you’re allowed to beg. She gnaws her lip raw, but she listens.

You tug your bindings again. Testing. Wishing they were stronger, wishing they would snap.

The scar on Beau’s belly blurs. For a single, choking moment, her tawny skin washes purple and then _red_ and –

No.

You are with Beau, who is safe; Beau, who will not hurt you more than you ask her to; Beau, who you trust with more than your life.

But then she walks behind you, out of sight. Pain flares bright. The next lash strikes perilously close to _that spot_ on the back of your neck, where he tightened his grip again and again and again –

Your mind ebbs: a numb well of blankness. You sag limp. An empty vessel. This is not it: that the catharsis you were chasing. Just a deeper pit of your abyss.

You were bound when Molly died. You heard it, from your cage. Oh, you didn’t _see._ You convinced yourself he was hurt, and you would tear Lorenzo limb from limb in recompense, and Molly would cluck his tongue but still help you sponge the blood from your hair after. Deep down though, you knew. You knew he was gone, gone, gone. You couldn’t have reached him, even if you broke your chains.

He came to rescue you. He _died_ for it. And when Beau came to rescue you, she almost perished at your own hand, pinned to the cathedral stones by your glaive. It’s not worth it it’s not worth it _you’re not worth it_ why can’t any of them _see –_

_Your name is Yasha Nydoorin, and you don’t deserve to live._

Beau’s rhythm falters. Another _swish_ through the air. The cord slaps boards, not back.

Moisture trickles down your spine. You’re intimately, squirmingly aware of it. Blood, sweat – you’re not sure. It’s as warm as your body temperature, and hatefully akin to his touch. Just as violating, just as inescapable.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, please –“

It’s hard to force words out, when you’re crying this hard.

“This,” says Beau, so near, so far away, “was a really shit idea.”

No. No, you want this. You _need_ it, so badly. But the more you scrabble for the freedom she used to bring you (the mellow, soft space she could create with her hands, her voice, her tongue) the further it drifts from your reach.

He stole this from you. Poisoned it. And _oh,_ how you _wish_ you could rip his wings off again, and again and again and _again._ You strain against the bindings, and –

_Snap._

They burst. You fall heavy as a hanged man cut from his gibbet, flumping to the ground.

“Shit!” Beau can’t spare your knees, but she catches you before your face meets the mats. The broken rope spools around your ankles. You’re panting and trembling, red haze already seeping back from your vision. Beau’s hands flutter, moth-light, over your bare chest, your face. She’s dropped the lash; you don’t know where. “Gods, Yasha. Fuck. What the _hell –_ “

Here is what you want to say: _I was a voyeur of my own body, watching it dance to his command._

Here is what you want to say: _I fought him, I fought him so hard._

Here is the confession you want beaten out of you: _I did not fight hard enough. I am afraid to say his name, like a child to the monster beneath her bed. Every time I speak him, it makes him real again._

Nothing comes but shudders, sobs. Breathless, gulpy, like you’re drowning again, this time on dry land.

The Rage simmers away. You’re glad for it. You don’t want it anymore. Beau cards your hair. You curl around her body, gripping tight as you dare. It's unfair, how you can want so desperately to be broken but be so afraid to break.

“I can give you pain,” whispers Beau, against your hair. That’s somehow still stormswept, though you’ve barely been outside in weeks. Though the thunder no longer calls your name. “But I can’t give you hate. Don’t ask it of me.”

No. She _has_ to hate you; she _has_ to; you can’t comprehend how she cannot –

“Don’t _fucking_ ask it of me,” Beau repeats. Her nails dig into your bloody shoulders. Gods; she’s crying, too.

“I’m sorry,” you say. Those words wouldn’t be enough if you said them a thousand, million, times. You try anyway: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry –“

Beau tells you that you don’t need to be. That you have nothing to apologise for. But eventually she surrenders, holding you while you repeat it, over and over. Until your voice cracks to splinters in your throat. Until you have nothing more to give.

* * *

You didn't take many points of damage, despite the blood. Hard to hurt, hard to kill. It's why he liked you. You heal yourself as Beau cleans the dojo, contorting to reach all the gashes on your back. You wipe them away, one by one. Easy as chalk off a board.

“You can go,” you tell Beau, once you’re smooth as snowfall. On the surface, at least. Your voice still scratches like you’ve swallowed a fishbone. “If you want, I mean. I’m okay.”

Beau calls you an idiot in every language she knows. Then she wrestles your shirt back onto you, takes your hand, and drags you upstairs to eat breakfast.

The bloody cord, the snapped ropes – you don’t know when or where she disposes of them. But you never see them again.

* * *

Three fights later, you still won’t Rage.

It’s not a conscious decision. More a block in your brain. After that night with the lash – the night you don’t dare ask Beau to repeat – every time you reach for your anger, you recoil. You take extra points of bludgeoning and piercing damage as a result (an arrow through the thigh, a crack from your ribs as your body crashes through a tree). But your foe aren’t exactly a high-level threat.

The Nein are still rekindling their relationship with the Dynasty. They face a party of thieves who’ve been preying on visitors to the Bright Queen’s citadel. Twelve half-orcs and drow, with only one low-level sorcerer to defend them. It takes a wall of fire to disband their phalanx, and they scramble away from Caleb as fast as they can on burning legs.

You haul yourself out of the splintered trunk as the last man gets decked by a giant lollipop. Jester turns to you before his smoking body hits the ground. She dashes over in a froth of white petticoats, shouting your name –

“Yasha!”

 _Orphan Maker_ , his voice corrects. It’s quieter than it used to be.

“I’m okay,” you reassure her, already pressing your wounds. Your palms gleam with angelic light. It’s nice to imagine there’s a part of you he didn’t violate. You can create with these hands, not just destroy.

Jester doesn’t let you demonstrate. She crashes into you, knocking you off your feet, already casting. The healing spell settles over you like the drowsy heat of midsummer. Your muscles loosen, tension sluicing from your spine.

Jester hugs you. Her embrace is so freely given, but no less cherished for it.

“You don’t have to be,” she whispers, in your ear. Words for just the two of you. “You understand? You don’t have to be okay. Not for me. Not for anyone. You’re allowed to break. You’re allowed to hurt and cry and –“ Her voice strangles itself to silence.

Your gaze swims to Beau, Nott, Caduceus. How much did they tell her? Perhaps nothing. Jester’s always been more perceptive than people give her credit for.

“Just please,” Jester continues, swallowing a sniff. “When you fall, let us be there to catch you. We love you so much, Yasha. Looking out for each other – that’s what families do.”

What she offers is more than you’d ever ask for. More than you deserve. Yet when Jester raises her tear-stained blue face, you can’t deny her.

“Okay.”

She holds out her hand, littlest finger extended. “You have to swear. Pinkie promise me.”

Carefully – so carefully – you hook your smallest digit around hers. “BFFs,” you say.

Jester’s chin wobbles. “BFFs,” she repeats, and clutches you harder, until your rib threatens to re-snap. Like she can hold you together when you’re rattling apart. Or at least, like she would try.

You grip her back. It’s a struggle to order your thoughts, slot them into a pattern that makes sense. You start and you stop several times. Jester doesn’t butt in. She lets you speak, in your own time.

“Thank you. I’m – I’m not okay. But. But I will be. I think. One day.”

You look past her, to the rest of the Nein. Caduceus, patching a slice over Fjord’s shoulder with hairy pink lichen. Caleb, stomping out the embers with his holey boots. Nott, crossbow holstered, still watching you with bolt-sharp eyes. And Beau, knuckles bloodied, belly scarred, reknotting the tie in her long, dark hair.

“Because of you,” you say. “All of you.”

* * *

You are Yasha Nydoorin, and you survived.

You are Yasha Nydoorin, and you are no longer a monster (unless you choose to be).

You are Yasha Nydoorin, and you are loved.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like it, please leave a comment on it!


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